1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a technology for controlling a line head.
2. Related Art
A line head used in a printing device, a scanner device, and the like is provided with a plurality of light emitting elements. Among various line heads, there is known a line head having a structure in which the light emitting elements are arranged in a zigzag shape (staggered shape) so as to prevent the deterioration in the light intensity between the adjacent light emitting elements.
However, in the case where the light emitting elements are arranged in a zigzag shape, when all the light emitting elements emit light at the same time, the light emitting positions in the sub-scanning direction deviate from each other. For this reason, in recent years, a technology (hereinafter, referred to as “a zigzag correction”) has been developed which deviates the operation times of the light emitting elements, and therefore corrects and prevents the deviation in the light emitting positions.
In addition, arranging the light emitting elements in this particular arrangement pattern of a zigzag shape is various. For this reason, in order to perform the zigzag correction on the line head having different arrangement patterns, it is necessary to prepare exclusive control hardware for each of the line heads or to prepare hardware in which a pattern control can be changed in accordance with a register setting.
For example, JP-A-2006-76148 discloses hardware in which a pattern control can be changed by a register setting.
However, in the technology disclosed in JP-A-2006-76148, since the recording (light emitting) time of each recording (light emitting) element chip is controlled just on the basis of a predetermined recording (light emitting) element chip row, it is not possible to handle different sub-scanning resolutions.